South San Francisco man stabs roommate over smoking
 
Nov. 25th, 2009
By Joshua Melvin, San Mateo County Times
 
REDWOOD CITY — A South San Francisco man faces attempted murder charges for stabbing his roommate in the face and neck after a disagreement about smoking on a balcony turned violent, officials said.
 
Bernie Castro, 58, started arguing with his 48-year-old roommate after the man left the balcony door open in the first block of Gardiner Avenue while he had a cigarette on Nov. 11, said South San Francisco Sgt. Joni Lee. The roommate, who has shared a house with Castro for three years, came back in after the cigarette and opened some windows.
 
The arguing escalated to violence when Castro allegedly punched the victim in the mouth. Lee said the fight stopped there and the victim went into his room for about 30 minutes.
 
But after he went out to smoke another cigarette, the arguing started up again. This time, however, Castro pulled out a folding knife and began attacking his roommate, Lee said. He was stabbed about eight times in the head, neck and face but is expected to recover, she added.
 
"It's just another good reason not to smoke," Lee said.
 
Castro is due back in court Dec. 9 and faces up to nine years in prison if convicted.
 
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Newsletter Reader Comment:

So the police Sgt offered this opinion about the crime eh? "It's just another good reason not to smoke,"
 
How about we change time/locale a bit, imagine something more along the lines of a violent rape, and the Sgt noting, "Well, that's what happens when you dress like a slut."
 
Same sort of mentality... just a different target group of who's "unclean" and deserving of blame.
 
Sad.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

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A Modest Proposal:  Mandatory Deposit for San Francisco Butts
SAN FRANCISCO, California July 9, 2009 – Question: When is a cigarette tax not a tax? Answer: When the city of San Francisco calls it a “fee” to pick up cigarette butts, instead. Local cigar store owners have a better idea.
The city’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a scheme this week to add a 20-cent ‘fee’ onto a pack of cigarettes effective Oct. 1. Why not call it a tax? Because, if it were called a tax, it would be illegal. State law says cities cannot tax cigarettes. So, Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Supervisors positioned the tax as a ‘fee’ to help offset the $7.5 million they say it spends every year picking up spent butts.
“How double-dealing can you get?” said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association. “If the public is going to let them get away with that, perhaps they’ll like this idea even better:  Make the 20-cent per pack ‘fee’ a deposit of one penny per cigarette. Then,  homeless or other people could collect the butts as they do bottles and cans which could be redeemed for money.
“That would accomplish two things: it would provide income for people who really need the money and it would help keep San Francisco streets and sidewalks clean,” said McCalla with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.
 “Unfortunately, a lot of San Francisco businesses and the city will suffer because of this so-called fee. Any business in the city that sells cigarettes and doesn’t object to this 20-cent per pack ruse has only itself to blame when their businesses tank and they have to lay off their employees or close their doors,” said McCalla.
William F. Shughart III of the Tax Foundation – an independent, non-partisan educational organization – supported McCalla’s position by saying that “former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry… thought he could solve his city’s own budget problems by raising its excise tax on gasoline by five cents per gallon. He was forced to rescind the tax increase within a month when revenue losses made it obvious that residents and D.C.-bound commuters were filling up their tanks in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.”
The IPCPR is an association of more than 2,000 cigar shop owners and manufacturers and distributors of premium cigars, pipes and pipe tobacco and related items. For the most part, these are small, family-owned businesses that employ tens of thousands of people and generate millions of dollars in state, federal and payroll taxes.
And, soon, fees in San Francisco.
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Contact:
Tony Tortorici
678/493-0313
tony@tortoricipr.com

San Francisco Mayor Wants to Tax Your Butts
June 3, 2009
Facing a budget deficit of nearly half a billion dollars, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will ask the city's Board of Supervisors next month to raise cigarette taxes by 33 cents per pack--ostensibly to cover the cost of removing cigarette butts from city streets. The federal cigarette tax was raised 69 cent per pack in April, and Congress is considering doubling the federal tax to $2 per pack to finance healthcare reform, but
policymakers may have overestimated the legal price that smokers would be willing to pay to light up.
"It is sheer fantasy to predict, as Newsom has done, that his plan will produce $11 million in additional revenue," writes William F. Shughart II, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, in a recent op-ed for the San Francisco Examiner. If the tax hike is implemented, San Francisco may finds that it loses too much revenue as smokers increase their purchases from neighboring cities. As Shughart notes, when the city of Washington, D.C., attempted to raise gasoline taxes by five cents per gallon, drivers began to line up for gas in northern Virginia and Maryland. The District lost so much tax revenue that it was forced to rescind the tax hike a month later.
Economics aside, fairness matters too, and the regressive cigarette tax falls disproportionately on lower-income consumers. "It is unconscionable to shift a large share of the burden of paying for [clean city streets] to the consumers of one product, no matter how shunned the product may be," Shughart concludes.
"Nanny State Runs Amok with City's Cigarette Tax," by William F. Shughart II (San Francisco Examiner, 6/3/09)
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The Moralists of San Francisco     
Written by Selwyn Duke    
08 August 2008

In the latest bid by the new-morality police, the City by the Bay has decided to prohibit pharmacies from selling cigarettes. And this is just the beginning; the left is chock full of good ideas about how government can save us from ourselves.

If there ever was an example of projection, it's when liberals accuse traditionalists of the imposition of values. In truth, no one seeks to impose his vision of virtue on others with jihadist-like zeal more than the modern left. A case study in this is San Francisco, the topsy-turvy metropolis where the government cares about you so much that it's going to make sure you're healthy if it kills you. Not only has it prohibited pharmacies from selling tobacco, it had already mandated that employers provide paid sick leave, and, according to SFGate.com:

The supervisors also voted to require chain restaurants to post nutritional information, including calories and fat content, on menus. This follows the creation of a program to recognize restaurants that don't use trans fats and an idea by Mayor Gavin Newsom to levy a fee on retailers of sugary sodas.

The board is also taking up legislation to dramatically curb where smokers can light up, including prohibiting puffing in taxis, lines for ATMs and common areas of apartment buildings. And Newsom wants to close some streets to cars on select Sundays so people can jog, hula-hoop and lay out their yoga mats on the pavement.

In support of this, Wes Alles, director of the Stanford Health Improvement Program (another position we just cannot do without), said, "Could you fault the city of San Francisco for wanting to create a healthier population?"

Actually, Wes, yes, I can. Because you, sir, are the reason Ronald Reagan once said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are:
"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." (By the way, since the San Francisco puppeteers are so concerned with eradicating unhealthy behaviors, I'm sure they will do their utmost to discourage homosexuality, which has been associated with premature death. Please get back to me on that one, Mayor Newsom.)

Help is an interesting word. It increasingly has become a euphemism, a codeword meaning, "I'm going to force my conception of virtue on you in the name of compassion, tolerance or sensitivity, and I won't even show you the courtesy of calling it what it is: the imposition of values."

This is a point people almost invariably miss. We have a habit today of saying that you cannot legislate morality, but the truth is that, unless we are to embrace anarchy, we have no choice but to do so. This is because a just law by definition is the legislation of morality.

Think about it: a law states there is something you must or must not do, ostensibly because it is either a moral imperative or is morally wrong, or a corollary of something that is. If not, why legislate it? Who will say he is creating a law based on taste or just for the fun of it?

Let's consider anti-smoking measures. They are based on the belief that it's wrong to harm your own health, that of others and/or to be a burden on society's medical-care system, and many believe it is right to impose this value through government.

And, boy, the impositions are now like the stars in the sky. The United States currently has more than 250,000 laws, and most of those enacted in recent times are the handiwork of leftists. They will mandate that people may not refuse to hire cross-dressers, that the Boy Scouts may not have access to public facilities, that religious symbols must not be in schools, and that employers must offer domestic-partner benefits, not to mention the tomes of regulations they have visited upon us. In their eyes, all legislation of morality is unequal, but some is less unequal than others.
The great fantasy writer and philosopher C.S. Lewis once spoke of such people, writing:

"Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values; about their own values they are not nearly sceptical enough."

My goal in this piece isn't to convince you what constitutes just law, as that will be secondary until we accept that law-making is all about imposing morality. And we must understand two things. First, by failing to grasp this fact, we cede the high road to leftists. They can then discredit traditionalist measures with the "you can't legislate morality" ploy, while their legislation flies under the cover of, well, what are we to call it?
It's much like the Clintonesque idea that certain indelicate behaviours with young presidential interns aren't really noteworthy. They're just something liberals like.

Second, to discredit "legislating morality" (that is, their opponents'
morals), leftists often seek to discredit morality altogether by espousing non-judgmentalism. The idea is that since we can't really say what right or wrong is, we can't possibly impose the former or proscribe the latter. But the problem with preaching non-judgmentalism is that it doesn't actually forestall judgment; it simply forestalls honest conversation about what proper judgments are. A sincere, healthy society acknowledges reality, which is that moral judgments must be made and that some of them must be legislated (i.e., a few just laws). It understands that the only law that isn't the legislation of morality is one that is the legislation of immorality, in which case it's the reflection of a misbegotten value. And we won't determine what true morality is and how much of it should become law by mouthing platitudes and sloughing off the matter.

As for San Francisco, it's reported that Mayor Newsom also wants to levy a $1,000 fine on those who don't sort their trash correctly. Well, I think I can be of assistance in this regard. When discarding refuse, don't forget to put the politicians in the bin with the pork fat and sponges.